We're giving away a copy of Acronis True Image Home 2012 to 5 randomly-selected entrants. In lieu of physical product, we're going to be awarding digital copies, allowing us to open this contest worldwide.

To enter, we want to know what your backup solution is if you have one, and also whether or not you've experienced a data disaster in the past. No, we're not gluttons for data corruption stories, but getting the word out about what can happen sure can't hurt!

Important: Non-site members need to include a Facebook or Twitter handle so that we have a method of contact in the event of a winner. Our regular community members will receive 2 entries into our contest as a thanks from us for their active participation.

My latest backup story is unfortunately rather recent. This February I got my current system. Moving stuff from one computer to the other was a simple matter of performing the necessary backups on the old system and restore them to the new. In the end I had 5 DVDs worth of backups (mostly work, pictures, music and emulator stuff).

Having used a backup software for some time already, this was no big deal. So once it was all done and over with, I wiped the old disk to be used on the new machine as a 2nd HD. Unfortunately, I didn't check my DVDs against errors. I had actually lost two of them, thanks to Roxio Burner. Half of my arcade and ZX Spectrum emulator collection gone. As well as a non essential part of my work.

Moral of the Story: Always check your backup media for errors. Just using a good backup program isn't enough. It's important to make sure the backups are correctly stored.

I use Nero Back-it-up on the family computer. The HTPC and my laptop currently don't have any back-up set up. Any important files I put on the family computer as a back-up, but I am at risk of losing my contacts, bookmarks, and the like.

I had a major disaster a few years back and lost everything. Saved games, bookmarks, home work, work work and, just stuff I had collected.
So now I am currently using the Windows 7 backup and restore, in control panel.
It runs every week on to a external drive and, I periodically copy that to another drive and/or burn it onto dvds for added assurance.

Primary backup is an online system from a company that we are channel partners for. This backs up almost all of my personal and company data (some exceptions, listed below)

Everything in "My documents" (which includes all my company stuff, MP3s and videos) is synchronised to a laptop (strictly speaking - not a backup but a copy as I can only get back the latest version).

MP3s, videos and photos are synchronised to an NAS device (again, strictly speaking not a backup)

MP3s & videos that haven't come from CDs or DVDs (e.g. downloads, own recordings, etc.) & photos are copied onto 2 DVDs, one onsite, one offsite. There are 2 sets of DVDs so that I never overwrite the latest backup

Finally, ex-clients are archived to 3 DVDs, 1 onsite, 2 offsite.

As for disasters - several, fortunately none mine. I've had disk failures, but my backups have always worked. I've had clients phone saying their disk has died and can I recover the data - usually the answer is yes, but the cost is as much as they would have paid for 5 years worth of backup, and it takes longer to do the recovery.

I have a 500 Gb Seagate Drive plus six USB drives of various sizes. I use a variety of backup means offered by Microsoft Windows and others. But I do religiously backup important things like my music and documents.
I also have two partiotions on my laptop, one for OS, and another for a second back up.
I learned the hard way after a drive died on me several years ago, a standard hard drive in a case, and I lost everything on it, including 1500 songs.

HI after having a hard drive fail on me in the past with no backups for it I learned my lesson and started making system images of my drives on a backup external hard drive. It would be nice to have a all in 1 backup solution.

I do not currently have much of a backup plan. I have lost data before. We had a 1TB HDD that failed with camily pictures on it. I had manually copied most of them to another drive but I did loose quite a few.